ABSTRACT
What is tendentious or ideological about The Swiss Family Robinson (1812)? What is noticed by the wise, demystified, critical reader I have become? A comparison with two other works, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), in one historical direction, and the Alice books (1865 and 1871), in the other, with a further gesture toward the quite recent Foe (1986), by the South African author J. M. Coetzee, will allow economical answers.
